At this week's preview screening of "The Smurfs 2," a young girl who apparently was experiencing her first 3D movie complained: "It's in my face!"

Child, I feel your pain.

Truly, "The Smurfs 2" was not produced for my enjoyment, nor for the amusement of any adult or any person in general who requires more from their movies than a few Smurfy puns and some thickly applied life lessons.

Even so, "The Smurfs 2" — dare I say it? — gave me the blues.

At one point, Grouchy Smurf (George Lopez) justifies a bit of Smurfy flatulence with this remark: "Every time a Smurf toots, somebody smiles." Not this somebody, who sat stone-faced, despite sensing something disagreeable coming from the screen.

Am I only proving myself worthy of Grouchy's namesake? I don't think so. In one scene, a man transformed into a duck reports: "That was ducked up." "Fouled up" would have been an appropriate pun, but why include a joke intended not just to go over the heads of the film's target audience but also to remind parents of an Anglo-Saxon profanity?

There's a world of difference between humor that works on multiple age levels, as in an episode of "The Simpsons" or an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, and a camouflaged F-bomb. I can't believe the creators of "The Smurfs 2" actually would respect a grown-up who commented, "I thought it was funny when the duck said ‘ducked up.'" And if they don't respect the adults, how do they feel about the kids?

Yet the creators of "The Smurfs 2" — or at least some of them — do respect children. The film's five credited screenwriters include longtime writing partners J. David Stem and David N. Weiss, who have worked on a lot of quality children's programming. (Stem grew up in Memphis, and even delivered The Commercial Appeal as a youth.) Stem and Weiss are smart scribes; their credits include "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius," a Nickelodeon spinoff feature, and a classic 1997 episode of "Rugrats" titled "Mother's Day" that can wring tears from a stone.

"The Smurfs 2" has similar ambitions, as new characters known as the Naughties — imagine dun-colored Bizarro World Smurfs — ultimately are embraced and accepted by the Smurfs after being rescued from their creator-father, the evil if comical wizard Gargamel. "The Smurfs 2," in fact, becomes a somewhat upsetting parable of child abuse and exploitation, as Gargamel, like some sort of Ariel Castro-Fagin type, keeps his two Naughties, mischievous Vexy (voiced by Christina Ricci) and dim but lovable Hackus (J.B. Smoove), strung out and dependent on magical "essence" until their liberation.

This story arc is mirrored by a less sinister, more formulaic subplot in which new father Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris), the returning human hero of "The Smurfs" (2011), has to reckon with his conflicted feelings about his embarrassing but big-hearted stepfather (Brendan Gleeson). "You never give up on family," someone says.

This positive theme can't quite overcome the inherent oddness of the Smurfs concept, developed in 1958 by a Belgian comic-strip cartoonist who called himself Peyo and brought to U.S. television in the 1980s by the Hanna-Barbera cartoon studio.

Directed by Raja Gosnell, who also helmed the first Smurfs film, "The Smurfs 2" puts the spotlight on Smurfette (Katy Perry), already the object of many late-night comedians' jokes due to her status as the lone female in a village of males who dress in nothing but footie-pajama tighty-whities and floppy hats.

A blend of live action and digital animation, like its predecessor, the movie opens with a narrator reading about Smurfette from a pop-up book. One of the less appealing aspects of the Smurfiverse, Smurfette's origin affirms the idea that women are figures of chaos whose (sexual) energy must be tamed and suppressed for the security of the community.

According to Smurf lore, the Eve-like Smurfette was created by Gargamel and planted in the paradise of the all-male Smurf world to incite trouble. "Her naughty nature took Smurf Village by storm," Narrator Smurf (Tom Kane) reports, until Papa Smurf (the late Jonathan Winters) gave her "love, kindness and a complete makeover," turning her blue so she would resemble everybody else.

In "Smurfs 2," Vexy, at Gargamel's bidding, lures Smurfette to Paris, where the wizard has become a celebrity illusionist. Smurfette begins to enjoy life on the wild side, but in reality Gargamel wants to suck out her essence and bring about "total Smurf-a-geddon." Needless to say, several Smurfs follow on a rescue mission that requires them to recruit Patrick and his wife, (Jayma Mays). The movie may not be a complete "Smurfastrophe," to quote one blue fellow, but the jokes are weak enough that even Gargamel and his CG cat, Azrael, aren't funny, even though Hank Azaria again astounds with his Lon Chaneyesque commitment to the grotesque character of the evil, goofy wizard..